Malaysian pharmacist Syed Azmi has emerged from hiding to apologise for organising ‘I Want to Touch a Dog’ earlier in October, a canine-petting event that drew a few hundred mostly Muslim Malaysians. So: not all Muslims hate dogs.
Only some do. Syed has been getting death threats for the initiative, and is being investigated by the federal Islamic Development Department, whose director general warned via the Malaysian press that petting dogs might lead to the ‘terrible consequence where they [Muslims] will keep dogs in their house’.
The Koranical hadiths, mind you, are muddled at best in establishing the tradition that good Muslims hate dogs. So I checked with my go-to source for Islamist affairs here in London, legal scholar Anjem Choudary, who dedicates his life to championing Sharia law in Britain – mostly by always picking up journalists’ phone calls.
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